The present invention relates to electrode dressers and more particularly to dressers for offset electrode tips.
There exists in the prior art three basic methods for dressing electrode tips. The first method for dressing electrode tips involves hand filing which, although by far the most popular method, it is also the most time consuming and is inaccurate because of the inability to manually dress the electrodes to retain their precise original shape. Misfiling and/or excessive removal of material is commonplace with the result being that the full life span of an electrode is shortened. Offset tip electrodes are in demand in industry because they can be used to weld places where ordinary symmetrical electrodes cannot reach. Hand filing of electrodes with offset tips provides unique problems because the area surrounding the tip is not filed in a symmetric manner.
The second manner of dressing electrodes involves placing a dressing blade against an electrode tip by use of a hand ratchet, and rotating the hand ratchet until the electrode tip is dressed in the required manner. As with hand filing, hand ratcheting lacks accuracy and is very time consuming.
The third method involves the use of automatic cutters. Automatic cutters are certainly the quickest, easiest, most accurate method of dressing electrode tips.
In addition, it is not necessary in most cases to remove the tip from the loading machine when dressing an electrode tip with an automatic cutter. Although automatic cutters have decided advantages over hand filing and hand ratcheting, they have, up to the present, only been useful in dressing electrode tips that have a configuration which is symmetric about the center of the electrode.
Thus, there is a need for an electrode tip dresser which can dress electrodes with offset tips in the environment of automatic cutters. Because offset electrode tips are difficult to dress using hand filing or hand ratcheting techniques, the need for an offset electrode tip dresser in the environment of the automatic cutter is more pronounced.